The Supreme Court of Racial Injustice

Randy Lyhus for The Chronicle Review

By Michael J. Klarman

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court
vacated a lower-court decision that had upheld the race-based
affirmative-action plan used by the University of Texas at Austin
in its admissions decisions. All things considered, the ruling was
less unfriendly to the cause of race-based affirmative action than
most commentators had predicted. Not only did the court decline to
overturn its endorsement of such plans from 10 years ago, it did
not even invalidate the Texas scheme.